Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: The city is proud to have hundreds of active nonagenarians and octogenarians in the district who are impatiently waiting to franchise their votes on May 13. City First spoke to a couple of old age citizens, who expressed their views properly and expressed concern over the dance of democracy going on these days and which used to be in the past.
A retired operational manager B V Ramachandra Rao (84) got nostalgic and said,“ I came to the city in 1987 and retired in 2002. The major shift in today's election compared to the olden days is that the connectivity of leaders with voters is missing. Man-to-man communication has been reduced to zero and taken over by technology (smart mobile phones and social media platforms etc). The expected progress of industrial sectors is still a dream come true and we are still not a wanting destination amongst international tourists."
Adds a former city president of the Movement for Peace and Justice (MPJ), Abdul Hameed Khan (87),“ Voting is the democratic right awarded to every adult citizen by Dastoor-e-Hind (Indian Constitution). In the olden days, there was no discrimination (of Hindus and Muslims) either in leadership or in society. The elections were fought on developmental issues. Today, the manifestoes sans developmental issues. Beyond assurance, nobody shares his vision or visionary plans and makes us believe where our city will be taken in the next 5 years or 10 years. Hence I will appeal to all the citizens, especially youths, not to waste their vote. Or else you will regret missing the opportunity for five long years. In the olden days, families would use to go in groups to cast votes, without fail, no matter how long they had to stand in the queues and how important work would be on their hands unless a medical emergency.”
The 82-year-old retired official, who wishes to remain anonymous said, “ I am a staunch believer of former chief election commissioner T N Sheshan. He had laid a set of ideal guidelines for voters while electing a candidate to represent in the Lok Sabha, the Legislative Assembly, or the municipal corporation. Earlier, the candidates hailing from respected families; with good social and financial backgrounds would contest the elections and bring change in the lives of the poor and underprivileged of the society. In today's context, I would like to summarise and convey my views through a couple of lines from prominent Urdu poet Iqbal, "Khuda ne aaj tak us qaum (society) ki halat nahi badli (changed), na ho jisko khayal aap apni halat ke badalne ka."